Review - Lights – Siberia

Lights, or, as I like to think of her, the female version of Owl City, has delivered her hotly-anticipated sophomore album finally. It hasn’t been very long, but waiting for an album you really want can be like a really hot, muggy summer – it may only be a certain amount of time, but it feels like forever.

Her debut, The Listening, went gold in Canada and even had a few mentions in the US (barely though, but, oh well). She had three top 100 songs up there, including the desperately lovely “Saviour”. Many people were ready for quite a bit more of that thank you.

Well, sadly, Siberia holds only fragments of what we all were expecting. If she is the same girl she was two years ago, you can’t really hear it on this album. For this CD, Lights lost quite a bit of her signature dreamy, up-beat synth pop that is so hot right now, and traded it in for grit, grime, and some not-too-subtle bits of dubstep (which come off like a desperate attempt to take her bit of this new upcoming and very exciting genre, which I can only assume she did to appease new label Universal). Lights may be singing about the same things as before, but it is so hard to hear on this one – the contrast between her voice and the harsh music takes away from anything else.

What is such a shame is that Lights got her name from writing cute, lyrically interesting and sound pieces with the airy pop that few are doing, but is really a great genre to be in right now. Save the hard for someone else, Lights.

Listen to: “And Counting”, her first record.